Sara Douglass - Pilgrim

Drago dreamed he was once again in the kitchens of Sigholt. The cooks and scullery maids had all gone to bed for the night, and even though the fires were dampened down, the great ranges still glowed comfortingly.

He smiled, feeling the contentment of one at home and at peace.

He stood before one of the great scarred wooden kitchen tables. It was covered with pots and urns and plates, all filled with cooking ingredients.

But something was missing, and Drago frowned slightly, trying to place it.

Ah, of course. Of what use were a thousand ingredients without a mixing bowl? He walked to the pantry and lifted his favourite bowl down from the shelf, but when he returned to the laden table, he found that the bowl had turned into a hessian sack, and that the plates and bowls on the table no longer contained food, but the hopes and lives and beauty of Tencendor itself.

“I need to cook,” he murmured, and then the kitchen faded, and Drago slipped deeper into his sleep.

Night reigned. Terror stalked the land. To the south of the Silent Woman Woods seven black shapes, a cloud hovering above them, thundered across the final hundred paces of the plain, and then vanished into the forest west of the Ancient Barrows.

Zared woke early, just as Drago and Faraday were rising and shaking out their blankets.

“Are you sure you won’t take two of my fastest horses?” he asked, standing up and buttoning on his tunic.

“No,” Faraday said. “The donkeys will do us well enough.”

“However,” Drago said, and his face relaxed into such deep amusement that Zared stilled in absolute amazement at the beauty of it, “there is one thing I would that you give me. I had a sack, and have lost it. Can you find me a small hessian sack? I swear I do feel lost without it at my belt.”

And he grinned at Zared’s and Faraday’s bemused faces.

Far, far away he stood on the blasted plain, wondering where his master was. Last night he’d dreamed he’d heard his voice, dreamed he felt him on his back. Was there a use for him, after all? No, no-one wanted him. He was too old and senile for any use. His battle-days were behind him. His legs trembled, and he shuddered, and the demonic dawn broke over his back .

They sat, arms about each other, under the relative privacy of a weeping horstelm tree. Outside the barrier of leaves moved Banes and Clan Leaders, whispering, consulting, fearing.

Isfrael, Mage-King of the Avar, lifted a hand and caressed Shra’s cheek. She was still handsome in her late fifties, and even if the bloom of youth had left her cheeks, Isfrael continued to love her dearly. She was the senior Bane among the Avar — had been since she was a child — but she was beloved to him for so many other reasons: she was his closest friend, his only lover, his ally, his helper, and he valued her above anything else in this forest, even more than the Earth Mother or her Tree.

When Isfrael’s father, Axis, had given his son into the Avar’s care when Isfrael was only fourteen, it had been Shra who had inducted him into the clannish Avar way of life, and into the deep mysteries of the Avarinheim and Minstrelsea forests and the awesome power of the Earth Tree and the Sacred Groves. She had made him what he was, and he owed her far more than love for that.

“Can you feel them?” she whispered.

“Yes.”

He trembled, and she felt the shift of air against her face as he bared his teeth in a silent snarl. “Demons now think to walk this forest!”

She leaned in against him, pressing her face against the warmth of his bare chest. “Can we —”

“Stop them?” Isfrael was silent, thinking. He pulled Shra even closer against him, stroking her back and shoulder.

“Who else?” he whispered.

“WingRidge said that —”

“WingRidge said many things. But what has the StarSon done to help. Nothing … nothing . The Avar have ever had to fend for themselves.”

“Can we stop them?”

“We must try. Before they get too strong.”

Shra laughed softly, humourlessly. “They are strong enough now! Did they not break through the wards of the Star Gate? Isfrael — those wards were the strongest enchantment possible! Made of gods, as well as of the trees, earth and stars!”

“The Demons used Drago’s power to break those wards.”

They sat unspeaking a while, thinking of the implications of Isfrael’s words.

Then Isfrael trembled again, and Shra leaned back. His face was twisted into a mask of rage — and something else.

Nausea.

“Their touch within the trees desecrates the entire land!” Isfrael said. “I cannot stand by and let them stride the paths unchallenged. And see, see.”

His hand waved in the air before them, and both saw what ran the forest paths.

“See what abomination they have called forth,” Isfrael whispered. “I must act.”

The seven beasts snorted and bellowed, hating the shade that dappled their backs underneath the trees. They ran as fast as they dared. Their escort had not entered the forest with them, and they were fearful without the comforting presence of the Hawkchilds. So they ran, and as they ran the trees hissed and spat, trying to drive these abominations from the paths of Minstrelsea.

But something more powerful — and more fearsome — than the trees pulled the beasts forward.

Mot lifted his head, and laughed. “They come!” he cried, and the Demons rose as one from the rubble where they had been waiting.

StarLaughter scrambled to her feet, her lifeless child clutched tight in her arms.

“What comes?” she said. They’d been waiting here for days, and although the Demons had waited calmly, StarLaughter had been almost beside herself with impatience. Her child awaited his destiny — and all they could do was sit amid the ruined Barrows. This was all they had come through the Star Gate for? She lifted her head. Something did come, for she could hear the distant pounding of many feet.

There was a movement beside her, and Sheol rested a hand on StarLaughter’s shoulder.

“Watch,” she said, and as she spoke something burst from the forest before them.

StarLaughter’s eyes widened as the creatures approached and slowed into a thumping walk. She laughed. “How beautiful!” she cried.

“Indeed,” whispered Sheol.

Waiting at the foot of the pile of rubble were seven massive horses — except they were not horses at all for, although they had the heads and bodies of horses, their great legs ended not in hooves, but in paws.

StarLaughter thought she knew what they were. When she’d been alive — before her hated husband, WolfStar, had thought to murder her — she’d heard Corolean legends of a great emperor who had conquered much of the known world. This emperor had a prized stallion, as black as night, which had been born with paws instead of hooves.

The stallion had been as fast as the wind, according to legend, because his paws lent him cat-like grace and swiftness, and he was as savage as any wild beast, striking out with his claws in battle, and dealing death to any who dared attack his rider. No wonder the emperor had managed to conquer so much with such a mount beneath him.

And here seven waited. Tencendor would quail before them.

Seven, one for each of the Demons, one for her — and one, eventually, for her son.

“DragonStar,” she whispered, cuddling her child close, and started down the slope.

They rode north-west through the forest through the night, heading for Cauldron Lake. The Demons leading, StarLaughter, her child safe in a sling at her bosom, behind them. They rode, but it was not a pleasant ride.